


My Own Flesh and Blood

by aionimica



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Married Life, Oedipal Issues, gratuitous therapy mentions, in which ben deals with his mommy issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 00:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15327648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aionimica/pseuds/aionimica
Summary: Rey buys some popular lingerie. It doesn’t go as planned.





	My Own Flesh and Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crossingwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/gifts).



> a birthday gift for the amazing and lovely crossingwinter <3 <3 i hope you have a lovely day!!
> 
> title is a quote from Antigone because of course i did

 

* * *

It wasn’t working.

Rey closed her eyes. Everything was wrong, he felt stiff in the wrong places. Her leg cramped. Ben twisted her on her back and moved to her neck, kissing her, but his heart wasn’t in it. He hovered above her, careful to keep from touching her, as if she were delicate or discarded or—

Rey growled. This wasn’t what she wanted. She turned them onto their sides and swung a leg over his hip, cupped his face and pulled his lips to hers. The kiss was half-hearted and messy and fueled by more spite and determination to make this work than any other burning passion.

Her satin fabric that served as the lingerie “bottoms” tangled in their legs and Rey pulled them out with frustration. It was a new purchase and she liked how it looked on her in the mirror, but here in the bed it was the worst purchase she ever made. It was a popular style once in the 70s, but was enjoying a resurgence and everyone was loving it and when Rey tried it on, she bought it without a second thought.

She propped herself up, letting the intricately designed golden top catch the light. It was flattering, giving her a slightly more busty appearance and showing off her abs that Ben loved to worship. She even did her hair differently, trading her triple buns for an intricate braid pattern she saw online.

For a moment she smiled as Ben took her in, looking at her like she was some goddess that he wanted to worship. And then he just stopped and lay on his back, not daring to touch her.

Rey sat up, biting her lip to keep from swearing. “Why did you stop?”

He didn’t look at her. “It wasn’t working.” His voice was clipped, his words precise.

Rey pressed her lips into a line. That was his old voice, his Ren voice that demanded obedience and silence.

“What do you mean it wasn’t working?” If he wanted her to drop the subject with that tone, he was wrong. She didn’t let him get away with it in the past; no way would he get away with it now. She adjusted the straps of her lingerie, the brass bikini cool against her skin.

“It just wasn’t…” He gestured up to the ceiling wildly and then to her.

“What did I do?” She asked incredulously.

“Nothing!”

“Well, obviously it was something.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his nose. “Do you really want to know?”

“Ben, what’s--”

“You remind me of my mother!”

Rey stilled and her hands fell to her side. A rush of emotions charged through her, but nothing quite compared to the look of horror on Ben’s face.

“Alright…. That’s… I’ll be honest, that’s not what I was expecting.”

Ben leaned back against the headboard, his face in his hands. “God, neither was I. Fuck.”

Rey leaned forward, unsure of exactly what he needed now. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really, if I’m being honest.”

She nodded once, sat on the edge of the bed. Methodically, she pulled off the straps and laid the garment to the side. Ben didn’t move. He was still as the dead as she pulled on her clothes and kissed him on the cheek. When she looked at him, he looked as though he would throw up.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said. She knew that look in his eye. It was fraught and tenuous and a million other emotions that he wrestled to keep under control. This was what they did: they learned over the years to let their emotions flow. To feel but not fight. “But I’m going to give you space and I’m going for a walk.”

He nodded, and murmured a thank you before he closed his eyes and leaned back. Rey walked out and when her feet hit the pavement, she began to run.

 

* * *

 

 

She and Ben had been married two years. She’d known him for four - five if she counted that last year he worked for Snoke. Her life had changed when she met him, for better or worse, but it had opened doors she never knew were possible for a girl from the backwoods mountains of Jakku.

Rey had once been proud of growing up under the proverbial rock, but shit if that didn’t come back to bite her every now and then.

More specifically, dressing up in lingerie that was a Target ripoff of his mother’s own Playboy shoot was, well. Rey wiped the sweat off her brow with her own shirt. This one was on her. She should have known, she shouldn’t have made such a dumb mistake.

Her apology beat into her head like a mantra as her walked devolved into a run. Every step she saw him and his aching guilt for merely mentioning his mother during sex. It wasn’t his fault, not alone. They both screwed up on this.

When she came back, the house, she found him in the kitchen. He was still shirtless but he’d pulled on a pair of shorts and he was doing the dishes with an intensity she hadn’t seen in years.

“So I called my counselor.” He didn’t look up, instead taking a breath and focusing on his words.

Rey sat down. “Okay.”

“And we talked for a while and I told him what happened and it was good.” A wry smile fell across his lips. “He reminded me that you most definitely aren’t my mother and any similarity is complete coincidence and I need to give you that grace.”

Rey made a glass of water and watched him. He worked through the dishes methodically with the same deliberate choices that he approached the rest of his life with. Back when she met him before they began dating, when he still worked for Snoke’s practice, he was controlled on the surface, but the rest of his life was chaos personified. That was one of the first exercises his therapist worked on with him. Rey had watched from the fringes as every day, a little more of his life came under his control.

When they met again, he was different and yet the same. He looked out on the world with agency, and when they started dating, he told her as they explored the definitions of trust, vulnerability.

She joked then that she’d have to get a counselor of her own. When he proposed, she finally did and never once regretted it. Fast forward a few years and they had their own schedules, their own trusted confidant and a joint gym in their basement.

Exercise and therapy. An excellent combination for the mind.

She noticed the bruises on his knuckles and reached out and took his hand in hers. They’d gotten back into kickboxing - Rey was the one who started first when she realized just suppressing the urge to hit things didn’t actually help with anything. “You forgot to tape them again.”

He grimaced when she touched. “Yeah well, I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.”

“Before or after your counselor.”

“Before,” he admitted. “That. Shook me up.”

“I could tell.” Ben was Ben; he was an open book and Rey could read him from a mile away. Between the set of his shoulders and the clench in his old judge if he was happy or ready to run. Now? Now he was empty and scared. Vulnerability could suck, but he knew her and she knew him and she wouldn’t toss it aside.

“And it’s me — it’s totally me. Because you’re you and I love that about you.” He ran a hand through his hair. Rey leaned against his shoulder. “And that’s why I love you, because you are like her. She’s strong and deliberate and caring and why wouldn’t I want you to be that way. But…” He paused. There were always buts.

“I’ve got shit to work through still. And I really don’t need to you in that same outfit that haunted my childhood.”

“We’ve both got shit.” Rey stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He was sweaty; so was she. “I’m sorry I didn’t think about that outfit first. Or what it might mean to you. This is just as much my fault.”

“No, it’s not. It’s my problem and I should have mentioned something…”

“And I should have remembered why this looked so familiar.” Rey caught his hair, dark brown in the light, and brushed it back. “Woulda, shoulda, coulda.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me too.” He turned around and Rey looked up. His face was softer, his hair falling into his face as he watched her. She grinned and leaned up to kiss his chin. His brown eyes smiled. Ben reached down and pulled her up; Rey wrapped her legs around his waist. “We're a team, remember?” She nuzzled his shoulder. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I love you,” he said.

Rey kissed him, slow and soft. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

 

“So I guess this thing is trash.”

Rey folded the offending lingerie and placed it into the donation pile in the corner of their closet.

Ben’s face was beet red when she glanced at him, the conflict plain as day. No matter how good she looked in it though, she wouldn’t do that to him. She chuckled. “Don’t worry, I got something better to replace it.”

Ben looked up at that, suddenly eager; the offending lingerie forgotten. Rey winked and kissed his cheek and said, “be right back.”

She watched as he let her go. Ben leaned back and grinned. His hair was half up from his workout, though half had fallen back into his eyes. He was hers and he was beautiful and Rey seared that image to the back of her mind as she walked to the bathroom.

There was a picture on his bedside from the week they met. She was hiking at the time and had taken to wrapping her arms in linen to keep the sun and bugs away. The extra she wrapped around herself to use later for a shelter. She was dirty and sweaty and he still looked at her like a lost puppy.

Looking back, Ben called it the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. She was going to make him eat those words tonight.

And when she walked back out, it was worth it, just to watch his eyes widen and his jaw fall open and to wonder if she might have killed her husband with some carefully placed strips of cotton gauze.

She had them carefully placed to hide her breasts but the late fall air sent her nipples hard and clearly outlined through the sheer fabric. It crossed over her belly, just low enough to offer a shadow of modesty before trailing behind her on the floor, like a courtesan’s silk gown. Silken gloves covered her arms while a thin glittering chain held the gauze in place on her belt.

“I…” Ben shook his head, his eyes still wide. “I see why you did your makeup like that.”

Rey smiled and stretched out on the bed like a cat, taunting and teasing. “Oh? And why was that?”

“Because you want to be cruel to me.” He whispered against her as kissed her eagerly, his lips moving from her mouth to her jaw to her neck to her breast. A stray hand lingered to the apex of her thighs and worked their way down.

“No,” she said and reached up and pulled off his shirt. She ran a hand down his chest, against those taught mole-and-freckled muscles that she had claimed and he gave her willingly.  “Because you’re worth it.”


End file.
